By the blacklisting Tuesday, Dec. 11, of the Jabhat al-Nusra group
fighting in Syrian rebel ranks as “a foreign terrorist organization” and
affiliate of al Qaeda in Iraq, Washington faces four quandaries:

1. The 10,000 fighters of this al Qaeda affiliate are the best-trained
and most professional component of the Syrian rebel front;.

2. Jabhat al-Nusra fields 3,000 fighters out of the mostly Free Syrian
Army’s 14,000 rebels fighting in and around Aleppo. They also constitute
the assault force’s spearhead.

3. The Islamists are at the sharp front edge of the rebel force
battling for control of the Syrian army’s biggest chemical weapons store
at Al Safira, near Aleppo. Thursday morning, Dec. 12, they were just a
kilometer from the base’s northwestern perimeter fence and advancing
fast. By week’s end, Jabhat al-Nusra jihadis may have smashed into the
base and seized control of the chemical stocks and Scud D planes
standing there armed with chemical warheads.

The imminence of this peril forced Bashar Assad’s hand into sending
Scud jets against rebel-held areas in an effort to stop their advance on
the base.

4. This al Qaeda affiliate is also better armed and equipped than any
other Syrian rebel force, thanks to the generous financial and
logistical aid laid on by Persian Gulf sources, especially in Saudi
Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.

The difficulty here is that those three Gulf Arab states are also
American allies in the war against Assad and the most important
contributors to the US-sponsored Friends of Syria, a forum which met in
Marrakesh Wednesday and formally recognized the umbrella Syrian
opposition coalition of exiled groups as the legitimate government of
Syria.

Reporters inside Syria reported that when the Jabhat al-Nusra fighters
heard this news, they declared 700 of their number had died… laughing.

But as the vicious civil war of nearly two years and more than 40,000
dead approached another dangerous peak, no one was laughing in Damascus
or Washington.

debkafile’s
military sources point to the next crisis looming ahead: If Assad fails
to stop the al Qaeda fighters from reaching Al-Safira and its poison gas
stores - and an al Qaeda affiliate succeeds for the first time in
arming itself with chemical weapons - the United States will have to
mount an air assault – not on Assad’s army but on the Syrian rebel
forces fighting him, because if they do manage to seize control of the
base, rebel fighters may decide to send the chemicals-tipped missiles
against Assad regime centers in Damascus.

The fall of al Safira would then transform the Syrian civil conflict into a chemical missile war.